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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24420853">echolalia</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stacicity/pseuds/Stacicity'>Stacicity</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, M/M, depression as a result of the apocalypse, spoilers for ep 169</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-04 06:42:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,402</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24420853</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stacicity/pseuds/Stacicity</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>You're not better than me. </em>
</p><p>Ever since Jude said them, those words haven't left Jon alone.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>89</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>echolalia</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thank you to Cat &amp; Dundee for beta-reading this, you're both heroes and I adore you.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>You’re not better than me</em>. </p><p>It’s a quiet walk from the still-smouldering factory, stillness only broken by the distant sound of screams, by the last hacking coughs as Martin tries to empty his lungs of smoke. Jon turns his eyes to the horizon, one foot in front of the other, and leads them along their predetermined path. </p><p>It’s like a Rube Goldberg machine. However many twists and turns along the way, there is only one place they can end up. </p><p><em>You’re not better than me</em>. </p><p>That’s a third death, now, at his count. Peter Lukas, not-Sasha, and now Jude. Three lives - creatures - that undoubtedly caused more harm than they did joy, that wrought suffering with no evidence of remorse, that hurt him and those he loved - those he loves. </p><p><em>You’re not better than me</em>. </p><p>Judge, jury and executioner. <em>His Holiness</em>, she’d said. Taking in his domain, surveying the horrors and delights of lush and all-consuming fear, wholly untouchable, wholly inconsolable. His world, his show, his fault.</p><p>Martin’s hand is warm in his, rough-soft skin against the too-smooth burned, his anchor holding him steady, his compass pointing him forwards, his tether to himself (and what it is to be himself) and he is-</p><p>Well, they’re alright. They will be. They have to be. </p><p>Even if fear fills Martin so entirely that he chokes on it like smoke, and is still only one mirror-sharp fragment of all the fear that Jon is feeling all the time from everyone, from <em>all</em> of them. </p><p>Even if Martin looks to Jon for answers he doesn’t have (or, worse, answers he does) and searches for fragments of hope in them like panning for gold in murky, stagnant water. </p><p>Even if Martin has set himself on a crusade against monsters and has failed to include in his count the monster whom he’s holding.</p><p><em>You’re not better than me</em>. </p><p>Diverting from their path (even if there is only one path and it is The path) in a search for revenge that changes nothing, solves nothing, an act of pure violence. Maybe Jude considered her death an act of service, as Jon served her Patron for her, <em>with</em> her. </p><p>And then, Martin choking on smoke with a self-professed fear of fire, his too-soft hand against his cheek slapping him roughly from the endless, infinite fear, bringing him back to himself, setting his feet against the ground. </p><p>One foot in front of the other. </p><p>What was it he’d shrieked? <em>Just die already</em>. Fierce and desperate and anguished; Martin <em>feels</em>, he feels enough that all his sharp feelings poke at the edges of his soft skin, splitting him open like overripe fruit, grief and helplessness spilling from him in huge and foaming waves and Jon is the rock against which those waves break (because there is nobody else it can be, could be, and he probably deserves it), and-</p><p>Well, Martin wants this over. Each outburst, each question, each time Martin says his name (whisper-soft in stolen moments when the sky is dim enough that things could almost be normal, frustrated when Jon is so choked by sensation that he can’t unstick his tongue to speak, angry or terrified or uncomprehending), each and every utterance is imbued with the hope for whatever is coming <em>afterwards</em>. Like if Martin is steadfast enough he can bear through this through fortitude. Through going all <em>Kill Bill</em>. As if enough obstinacy will make the world shift around him, will make light bend and circles square. </p><p>Martin hopes and hopes and hopes for whatever comes next<em>. </em></p><p>Maybe he cannot fathom this being <em>it</em>. </p><p>Just this. </p><p>Just fear. </p><p>And an end, yes, because everything comes to an End (Oliver had made that clear enough), but resolution doesn’t mean satisfaction. </p><p><em>You’re not better than me</em>. </p><p>Jude was happy here. Jon is not happy here. Jon was not happy before. Perhaps, Jon will never be happy again. Perhaps Jon is happier here than he would be in a world soldered-together and patched into a facsimile of the ignorance that they can’t claw back. </p><p>Perhaps Knowing is better, until there is nothing left to be known. </p><p>Martin’s lips are gentle against his cheek, soft and plush against pitted scars from worms and knives and the rough scrape of a wax-museum floor, a reminder that what drew Martin from the Lonely is what draws him forwards here. </p><p>(It’s not Jon. It’s just love. Martin’s love. Martin is holding himself together and Jon envies him that). </p><p>“Where next?” Martin asks, and his voice is grated rough and raspy by the smog behind them, another layer of innocence shaved off. </p><p>What will be left of them, at the end of this, as they are peeled bare, sanded to their very core? Angels from marble? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps nothing at all. </p><p>Jude and not-Sasha and Peter Lukas left no bodies, no blood, no mess. Empty and ephemeral. Just malice. Just fear. </p><p><em>You’re not better than me</em>. </p><p>“Jon?” </p><p>“Mm?” </p><p>Another missed prompt. Martin’s tone is gentle but his eyes are distant and Jon knows he’s disappointed him (that he’s disappointing him). He sucks a breath into lungs that don’t need it, tastes another wave of fear fresh and cooling at the back of his throat. </p><p>“Sorry. It’s the Dark, next. Rayner.” </p><p>“Right.” Martin seems soothed by that. Perhaps he isn’t afraid of the dark - or at least, he thinks he isn’t. Jon is loath to question what Martin knows and doesn’t know (wouldn’t say it out loud unless asked). But he doesn’t need to question, he Knows. “Well, at least that should be, um. Easy. Easier.” </p><p>Jon nods. Even the Dark can’t keep the Eye at bay for long. He leans into Martin’s side regardless, leeching comfort he doesn’t deserve, hiding himself behind the fragile shelter of Martin’s ribs, tasting the strange and citric edge of hope.</p><p>Is he getting used to it? Or does Martin just feel less of it, these days? </p><p>Jon doesn’t want to know the answer to that, but - he does. He knows. He cannot help but know. </p><p><em>You’re not better than me</em>. </p><p>“Not long now,” he adds, because it’s not (in the grand scheme) and he ought to try to be comforting. </p><p>“Yeah.” Martin nods, cheek set atop Jon’s head, shifting his hair when he moves. “Do you- do you feel better?” </p><p>He means revenge, Jon knows, and that’s complicated. There is an answer, somewhere, but it’s tangled in the knotting around his lungs and his heart and to disentangle it will require more conversations than they have time for. </p><p>He is glad that Jude is dead. He is satisfied that he was the one to kill her. He is terrified by both of those facts. He is dreading the moment that Martin is forced to make that mental link (the idea he’s been ignoring, dancing around, skipping over) and recognise the monstrous in him, the monster that is him. </p><p>“I think so,” he says finally.</p><p>It’s not a lie. It’s not really the truth, either. It just - <em>is</em>. </p><p>It’s an answer, anyway, excuse enough to drop the matter and settle into what scant comforts they do have (Martin’s arm across his shoulders, Martin’s heartbeat against his ear), excuse enough to turn their eyes from the cosmic elephant in the room. </p><p>Worse than that, Jon knows that Martin can use that to drive himself forwards. If he can smile and say that yes, killing Jude was for the best, has made him better, then Martin will rationalise that to himself and drive confidently on. Faith, for his Holiness. The thought makes Jon want to scream, but why add to the noise? </p><p><em>Are you alright</em>, he wants to ask, because that is what people ask of those they love, but the answer is there at the tip of his tongue already. <em>I’m sorry</em>, he wants to say, but that is overly confusing and if he starts apologising for this world he doesn’t think he’ll ever stop. <em>I love you</em>, he wants to say, and so he does, because it is one of the few simple truths they have to hold onto. He whispers it to feel Martin’s hand tighten against his, tension sliding out of his shoulders. <em>I love you</em>, he says, and Knows it doesn’t change anything. </p><p>
  <em>You’re not better than me.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You’re not better than me.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>You’re not better than me: just die already. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>You’re not better than me. I Know. </em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Kudos &amp; comments soothe my itching soul.</p><p> <a href="https://ajcrawly.tumblr.com">Find me on tumblr</a> and say hi!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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